Project Management Week 6

Analyzing Scope Creep

Introduction

For this week’s blog, we were asked to share a project that experienced issues related to scope creep.

Description of project that experienced scope creep

I was assigned to analyze an old training module and figure out what would be involved to update this training to the new process. At the beginning of the project, it was decided on that all videos would be removed and the eLearning module would be retired. The poster that the service techs used as a reference would now become a training tool by store managers along with remaining as a reference tool for service techs. The process on the poster would need updating. 

What specific scope creep issues occurred?

A decision was made by management that they wanted to replace the old videos with animated .gifs. This innovative solution would require our developer to obtain this new knowledge and skill for developing animated.gifs

How did you or other stakeholders deal with those issues at the time?

The PM sat with the developer to estimate how long it would take to acquire this knowledge and skills to actually created the animated .gifs. She then adjusted the timeline, budget, and scope of the project and called a meeting with the stakeholders that would make the final decision to move forward with this approach.

She shared the new timeline they would be looking at for completion of the project, how this innovative idea was out of scope for the original agreed upon project, and the estimated cost the idea would add to the project for the developer to require the necessary knowledge and skill to build the animated. gifs.

Had I been in the position of managing the project, what could I have done to better manage these issues and control the scope of the project?

One of the challenges I saw at the beginning of this project is that there was never really a planning meeting with the core team. There also, needed to be further audience analysis to be done. How much time did they have to train? How are they performing the repair now? Also, there was never a brainstorm meeting with IDs and Developers to see if there were better solutions that could be implemented. The update was pretty much dictated to by the performance and learning advisor. 

Once I had the information from the analysis and the brainstorming meeting I could then build a better project plan with a well defined scope, timeline, and estimated cost that management could share with stakeholders.